


Hearts of Stone

by depraved_trash



Series: Pressure and time [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Amputation, Brainwashing, F/F, Medical Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 15:20:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4611705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depraved_trash/pseuds/depraved_trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to Piercing Point. Homeworld Gems are made, not born. (HIATUS)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearts of Stone

**Author's Note:**

> In subsequent chapters, this fic will contain graphic depictions of sexual assault and intimate partner violence. Please do not continue reading if you feel this may cause you distress. If you are affected by any of these issues, I urge you to contact RAINN and/or a domestic violence service in your area.

_Then_

 

Silence and the humming of machines. Green lights on white walls.

The peridot on the bench had stopped shaking a while ago, although occasionally the fragile needles sticking out of her gem would twitch infinitesmally, requiring manual recalibration. Peridot was not sure whether the movement was a result of pain or simply a side-effect of the procedure. It did not matter. The laser-scalpel in her hand was steady as she made another incision, just a few fingerwidths short of the new gem's elbow. There was a muffled sound from the patient's throat, like crying heard through thick walls. Peridot ignored it.

Three limbs down, one to go.

They were one technician short, now, so the other peridots had to work more quickly to compensate. Too much delay could mean a black mark on all their records, and they were still, after all, in the evaluation phase. They knew all too well what happened to those peridots who failed.

The new one had not known. Faced with the sight of another peridot strapped down on that operating table, as she herself had been strapped down only a few rotations ago, she had hesitated just a moment too long when ordered to measure the patient for prosthetics, had expressed just a little too much defiance when asking their obsidian overseers what would happen if she refused to take part in this. The overseers had wasted no time in their response, and she was dragged from the room, still reeling from the shocks that had been administered to her by their handheld weapons.

Peridot knew she would not see her again, just as she knew that the same thing would happen to her if she stepped out of line.

You follow orders. You do not question them. This is what she had learnt.

 

Jasper didn't see the point in these training exercises. She was a loyal soldier, a competent warrior; she did not need to be tested and conditioned like some newly-formed Kindergarten gem. And yet the implication was that she had gone to seed, after so long on the empire's borders. She would need to be put through her paces, re-taught certain lessons, reminded of certain things.

Jasper did not need reminding of anything. She had raced ahead of the younger jaspers in the initial drills, led them to decisive victories in the simulations, and when the time came to pit her skills against the rest of her cohort, she was the last one standing, just as she had been all those millennia before. No matter that their designs had been improved since her day. They may have been faster and twice as strong, in theory, but experience was everything.

When it came to the insurgent tracking exercise, however, Jasper's age counted against her. She quickly realized that their target was much more technologically-advanced than she was accustomed to, with skills and knowledge at her disposal that required more than brute force to counter. As the other jaspers stormed over the small moon's surface, each footfall throwing clouds of red dust into the dark air, Jasper stayed, and listened, and observed.

With predictable cowardice, her quarry gravitated toward the silence and the stillness, and Jasper spotted her, a flash of green against cliffs of burnt umber, searching for an alcove in which to hide. She would inevitably corner herself, perhaps in the process of setting up some kind of ambush on the others; it was, after all, the only way such a small, weak gem could hope to scrape an advantage in this fight.

Jasper waited until she sensed her target had dropped her guard, and after that there was no need for stealth. The peridot could not hope to outrun her, and as Jasper gained on her, she saw the inevitability of defeat in the small gem's eyes, grappling with the desperate pain of denial.

The axe swung. The peridot tried to dodge, but was clipped and flung sideways, crushing one leg in the process, and Jasper rounded on her as she tried to drag herself away. "No, no, please, I didn't do anything wrong," the peridot shrieked, but Jasper knew that to hesitate in this situation would count against her more than any other kind of failure, and when the axe came down for a second time, there was nothing of her left but discarded prosthetics and her gem.

And then a third strike, and nothing was left of her gem at all.

She remembered that last time it had been a pearl, and that some of the jaspers in her group had looked at each other uncertainly as she was set loose into the wasteland before them, a mockery of a head start. Those who had lagged back were no longer there when they boarded the troop transports headed for the Crystal system, and Jasper did not see them again.

You follow orders. You do not question them. This is what she had learnt.

 


End file.
